Praggnanandhaa draws with Caruana; Vaishali beats Zhongyi

PAPHOS (CYPRUS): (Apr 6) R Praggnanandhaa remained in search of his second win after drawing with pre-event favourite Fabiano Caruana, while his sister R Vaishali scored a fortunate victory over China’s Tan Zhongyi in the seventh round of the Candidates tournaments here.

At the half way stage, Pragg remains on a fifty percent score and will need a miracle in the final seven games in order to come into contention. Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan was poised to make a draw with Anish Giri of Holland. The Uzbek youngster had scored four victories in a row and what could be another draw-marred day, not much changed in terms of standings.

Sindarov, on six points, is firmly ahead of Caruana on 4.5, a full point ahead of Praggnanandhaa and likely Anish Giri. Matthias Bluebaum of Germany and Wei Yi of China are now on 3 points each, a half point ahead of Hikaru Nakamura of United States.